the winter
season was not wanting, and the plain boarding of the floor showed
itself no stranger to scrubbings. A clock hanging on the wall ticked
very loudly in the perfect stillness as the schoolmistress took her
seat.

She appeared to examine a book for a few moments, then raised her head,
looked at the faces before her with a troubled expression, and began to
speak.

"I wish to know who can give me any account of the way in which Harriet
Smales received her hurt. Stop! Hands only, please. And only those
raise their hands who actually saw the blow struck, and overheard _all_
that led to it. You understand, now? One, two, three--seven altogether,
that is quite enough. Those seven will wait in the room at four o'clock
till the others have all gone. Now I will give the first class their
sums."

The afternoon passed Very slowly to teacher and pupils alike. When the
clock struck four, work was put away with more than the usual noise and
hurry. Miss Rutherford seemed for a time to be on the point of making
some new address to the school before the children departed, but
eventually she decided to keep silence, and the dismissal was got over
as quickly as possible. The seven witnesses remained, solemnly seated
at their desks, all anxious-looking.

"Lucy Wood," Miss Rutherford began, when the door was closed and quiet,
"you are the eldest. Please tell me all you can of this sad affair."

There was one of the seven faces far more discomposed than the rest, a
sweet and spiritual little countenance; it was tear-stained, red-eyed;
the eager look, the trembling lips spoke some intimate cause of
sympathy. Before the girl addressed had time to begin her answer, this
other, one would have said in spite of herself, intervened with an
almost agonised question.

"Oh, Miss Rutherford, is Harriet really dead?"

"Hush, hush!" said the lady, with a shocked look. "No, my dear, she is
only badly hurt."

"And she really won't die?" pleaded the child, with an instant
brightening of look.

"Certainly not, certainly not. Now be quiet, Maud, and let Lucy begin."

Lucy, a sensible and matter-of-fact girl, made a straightforward
narration, the facts of which were concurred in by her companions.
Harriet Smales, it seemed, had been exercising upon Ida for some days
her utmost powers of irritation, teasing her, as Lucy put it, "beyond
all bearing." The cause of this was not unknown in the school, and Miss
Rutherford remembered the incide